Do Your Civic Duty: Buy a Honda Hybrid

Hybrid cars are very popular for a number of reasons. They get excellent gas mileage, which can save huge amounts of money. They are environmentally friendly, which can save the planet, eventually. Moreover, they are a lot of fun and quite popular to drive. The car company Honda was one of the first auto manufacturers to make a hybrid vehicle.

The Honda Insight was introduced in 2000 as a miracle car. It is still a fairly popular model of hybrid vehicle. The Insight is a two door vehicle that seats two people. In creating this vehicle, Honda believed that owners of this car would be the type who usually only have one or two people in the car anyway.

To make the car incredibly efficient, Honda reduced the size as much as possible. That offers the car more power and more fuel efficiency, which is something most hybrid owners are searching for. In addition to the small seating area, they also offer very limited cargo and luggage space. Again, the thinking here is smaller is better in terms of engine efficiency. It pays off in terms of gas mileage, but many people are unhappy with the overall size of the vehicle, which leads them to purchase cars with regular engines based purely on interior and cargo space.

Another Honda hybrid option is the Civic hybrid. This vehicle, like all of Honda's hybrid autos, manages to combine the juice from an electric motor with the power from a traditional type engine whether it is a gasoline or diesel engine. The vehicle contains batteries that give power to the motor. These are recharged during while the car is running by using the motor as a generator.

This is better than most battery or electrically powered vehicles in that you don't have to plug a hybrid vehicle into an external outlet for any type of recharge time because the batteries continually recharge themselves just by running the car. The hybrid Civic is a four door vehicle, and it is comparable to most of the other traditionally powered Civics Honda has offered.

For many of the vehicles sold in the western United States, the Civic offers a zero emissions vehicle status, which is a real plus when you live in an environment that requires low emissions. The car itself offers a very sleek and sporty look. The interior is very functional, but looks a bit plain. There is a center storage console that also functions as an armrest. The Civic hybrid has rear headrests, and front bucket seats, with the driver's seat being height adjustable, a nice feature for people of varying sizes. Unlike the traditional Civic, the rear seat does not fold in the hybrid because of the necessary space for the hybrid's battery pack.

The hybrid does well in terms of collision tests, and most people consider it to be one of the safer vehicles on the road today. This car offers an electric based power steering system, and the wheels are a light alloy to reduce the weight of the vehicle. The Civic gets over forty miles to a gallon of gasoline, and features Honda's Integrated Motor Assist engine system. This combines a gas engine with a DC motor-generator unit. As a result, it is never used as a wholly electric vehicle. The Civic hybrid is great for city driving, as it has excellent low speed acceleration, and it is also good for highway driving as well.

One final Honda Hybrid option is the Honda Accord hybrid. This vehicle, like Honda's other hybrid offerings makes use of its Integrated Motor Assist engine system. It is also the first V-6 hybrid vehicle in the world. The Accord hybrid gets thirty seven miles to a gallon of gasoline on the highway and twenty-nine miles to a gallon in the city. It offers two hundred and sixty horsepower and offers several weight saving features like aluminum hood and bumper beams as well as a magnesium engine head cover to give the car more bang for the hybrid buck.

Honda has a number of hybrid offerings that all offer the benefits of a hybrid vehicle. Honda's unique technology, like the Integrated Motor Assist engine system, makes it a leader in the production of hybrid vehicle technology.